To my mind, Ban has always meant permanent.
“You’re banned from this place! You’ll never be allowed in again!”
While I’ve always thought of Suspend as being temporary.
“You’re being suspended from school for 1 week, over fighting.”
Ban:
- to prohibit especially by legal means
- bar entry
- to debar temporarily especially from a privilege, office, or function
- a: to cause to stop temporarily
b: to set aside or make temporarily inoperative - to defer to a later time on specified conditions
- to hold in an undetermined or undecided state awaiting further information
When I hear someone mention they were banned my reaction is: “Holy shit! WTF did you do to earn that!” Then I find out it was only for a day or three: “Oh… That’s not a Ban! That’s minor. Go touch grass. You’ll be fine.”
I’ve been banned from subreddits and communities a few times. At least once I never even noticed because it was so short.
How is it a Ban if I didn’t even notice?
Why did Ban in online forums and games, come to mean temporary?
Is it simply an example of the intensification of language? To make something mundane, seem more severe than it is?
Does it bother anyone else? Or am I alone here?
A ban is imposed on a person or an action. It can be rescinded at any time, but remains in place until it is explicitly rescinded. An expiration can be included in the terms of the ban, which automatically rescinds the ban after a set duration. The base definition of “ban” implies nothing about duration. Without clarification, any assumption regarding duration is baseless. Such clarification can be direct, such as including a clear statement of the period for which the ban is in place during the issuance of the ban, or indirect, such as context clues regarding the severity of the infraction that led to the ban being issued.
A suspension is placed upon statuses, privileges, credentials, or the like. Suspension is, by nature, a transitory state. Examples include being suspended from a job pending investigation of behavior, having one’s club membership suspended until club dues are brought current, or having one’s login credentials suspended while one’s account appears to be compromised. The transitory nature of a suspension implies that it resolves upon completion (or inaction on) of a task related to the object of the suspension. Upon completion of the sub-task, status is either reinstated or terminated. In the previous examples: employment is terminated upon conclusion of an investigation that proves the employee acted inappropriately, club membership is reinstated once payment of the outstanding balance is verified, account credentials are reinstated with access limitations once the account owner proves they are in control of the account.
Suspension is a step along the path to termination or revocation, not to a ban. The two terms are not directly related in that way. There can be overlap, but they are not different degrees of the same concept.